Warbird Information Exchange

That's Great to see !!!!!!!

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T, our Second Assistant Crew Chief, is modeling the new stocking caps the team was presented with last Saturday. From our team to all of you, we want to wish everybody a Happy New Year. 2015 is Kay's year to fly. Keep the support and good wishes coming! We appreciate it. As always, we will be working on Kay this coming Saturday. Drop on by and enjoy a few minutes with us! Cheers, JR

Our Crew Chief JR took this shot at midnight over the lights of Ft Worth while riding on the GGA DC-3 New Year's Eve flight. There have been many passengers who have enjoyed these flights since Thanksgiving. The demand is such that they will continue for nearly another week, weather permitting. Anyway, the Special Kay team sends their best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2015. Kay will take her rightful place in the sky. Thanks again for your support. Happy to be in the Republic, the other JR

Couldn't resist one more shot of Nimrod pilot Bob Bakken in his natural spot. We sure enjoyed having our "rock star" come see us. The team always enjoys visiting with our A26 people. We admire them and their accomplishments so much. In reality, these are the things that really matter. Otherwise, it is just another old airplane. Here's to our return to flight in 2015!! JR

Ahhhhhh, Ray our metal wizard is back on the job. We sure have been missing him. He fabricated some pieces for the nacelle, but had not installed them yet. He got a new start on it today and made a lot of progress. These are critical for the newly overhauled engine installation in that they must be completed before we can hang the QEC just because of where they are located. It would be impossible to reach with everything in place so no repair, no installation. Also have to wait on the right side oil tank installation until the engine is hung. One thing leads to another. Hmmm, seems to be a repeating theme for the team. We enjoyed a good BBQ lunch today and made a lot of significant strides with the details. It is good to have the team back from the holidays although a few were still AWOL. Or maybe it should be more like MIA? Hope to have everybody back next Saturday, well except for your's truly. Another trip to NJ on the schedule. Brrrr... Everybody stay warm in the next Arctic breakout. JR

For the NKP guys here, I have been looking at Google Earth images of NKP base and see what looks to be big oil tank foundations on the NE side of the base. I would suppose this was the POL dump. Where was the bomb dump in relation to the base? It appears most of the occupied areas were on the east side of the runway which runs more or less NW to SE. The commercial terminal and ramp are roughly in the middle to the east side. Vegetation sure has taken over that whole area, but obviously the buildings or materials were scarfed up rather quickly adding to the ease with which the jungle moved back in. Your thoughts? Regards, JR

The bomb dump, at least in 1966, based on my memory, was located beyond those foundations on a line parallel with the runway. I believe our hooches were toward the North end of the runway. I think those foundations would have been between our hooches and the bomb dump. I do not remember where the POL area was when I was there. I do remember that av gas made for some real potent napalm though. Once there was a brief shortage of regular gas, and we used av gas instead! We also mixed in some av gas with our varsol we used to clean the guns.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

So Randy, was it one common bomb dump for all of the various aircraft based at NKP? The .50 cal and 20mm ammo stored together in one location away from the rest of the bombs and rockets? How was that organized? Might have changed from your early period up until the A-26's left at the end of 1969. I am still waiting for Bob D to chime in here to see where the dump was in his day. As the base grew, it might have been moved farther away or perhaps put in a more secure spot in case the bad guys lobbed some rockets in one night. I have not heard of any attacks, but it could have been done if they wanted to bad enough since it was so close to the Laotian border and I'm not sure just how much N Vietnam respected the borders of Thailand at the time. They had no problem with Laos or Cambodia in their thinking. Do you recall how your typical day was spent in terms of cleaning guns vrs loading ammo? You had to remove the guns from the aircraft for cleaning so that took some time, right? Thanks a lot for sharing the memories. Regards, JR

...............was it one common bomb dump for all of the various aircraft
======When we arrived on 9 June,66, the bomb dump was fairly small and hadn't really built up. The only ordnance carrying aircraft when we got there was the 01's and the Sandys.(A1-E SAR), so there wasn't much stuff there at all. The Sandys carried a multitude of stuff, but the FAC's mostly used WP rockets. But the "stuff" started arriving by truck when we arrived, and it arrived in bunches. They trucked it up from Sattahip I believe. We were unloading trucks day and night.
As far as security, there were only trip flares positioned around the base, no 10' chain link fences or anything like that. Our hooches were at the time on the perimeter and some nights we would be awakened by the glow of trip flares going off down in the jungle. Never knew what it was that set them off, probably an animal or someone messing around. They did have perimeter patrols around the base. I did talk to one AP that was on patrol one night and they came upon someone trying to sneak in. The AP's carried illumination flares they could pop to light up a small area. The AP said they ordered the guy to stop and he took off, and the AP fired the flare directly at him and it hit him in the back, but he still kept running. Could be a wild tale, but I took it to be the truth at the time.
.......Do you recall how your typical day was spent in terms of cleaning guns vrs loading ammo?
======Initially, before we found our stash of spare guns, we would have to remove, disassemble, clean, reassemble, reinstall and rearm the guns in one shot. Due to our facilities, we could only do one plane a day, which did suffice. After we found our spare guns, (they had arrived before we did, and someone tucked them away back in a warehouse. They had nothing else on base that used the .50's so they forgot about them. Thankfully, Carlos Christian, our 1st Sgt. found them for us. Then we has several sets of spares we could just change out, and clean in between. Typically we could remove the gun boxes, take them to the ammo tent, reload the boxes, take them back to the plane and install them and pre-load the guns in about an hour or so. Then if there were any gun problems, you could add on to that.
As for the bomb dump, I have seen pictures of it in the later years, and it had really built up, so it must have been moved farther North away from the base.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Armament shop with some spare guns ready to go. (bet you wish you had a set of them for "Kay"!!


Ammo tent where the gun boxes would be reloaded. .50 cal came in 100rd boxes, so they had to be broken out, linked together and put into the boxes. We would go in and break out several thousand rounds and link the belt together in a huge pile, then load the boxes until they were full, then break the belt and start over. After doing it enough times, you could get pretty efficient at it!

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Great pictures, Randy! Thanks for posting those. But who is the skinny kid in the picture?? Say, what is that handle looking thing on the .50's?? Some kind of carrying handle? If only we had about 8 of those for K. I wonder if a 3D printer could make some for us? On the ammo, did it come in loose rounds or belted already? I saw a film yesterday of a machine that loaded several rounds into the belt maybe 8 or so at a time back in WWII. Made me wonder. Do you recall where the gun charger line was attached to the gun? Thanks, JR

That skinny kid would be me, unfortunately, "65 pounds ago!"

.......what is that handle looking thing on the .50's??

===That is the link chute that attached to the opposite side of the gun. The feed belt was on one side and the link chute was on the other. It directed the links down into the brass bay.

............On the ammo, did it come in loose rounds or belted already?

====All of the .50 we got while I was there came in 100rd boxes, already linked. When I was at Hurlburt, we had a linking machine and we had a lot of rounds come in tins, just like thay package Spam in, only bigger. The tins even had the "key" on them like you would put in the tab and crank the thin strip of metal off to open the can. We had a faster way of using a pair of pliers. The linking machine was pretty neat.

...........Do you recall where the gun charger line was attached to the gun?

====If you were standing up looking into the gun bay, the gun chargers were attached to the outboard side of the guns. If you ever watched noticed on the waist gun .50's, they had a large handle sticking out that the gunner would pull on to charge the gun. On the aircraft guns, there was just a stud that stuck out instead of the handle. The pneumatic charger attached to the side of the gun, and the charger cylinder had a slot that this stud went in. When the gun switch was put in "Holdback" position, a solenoid opened to activate the charger and pull the bolt back and load a round. The empty brass, by the way was ejected downward through the gun directly into the brass bay. These solenoids, one for each side, were located above and to the rear of the gun bay. On the back side of them there is a button that you push to open the solenoid manually. That is what we would use to initially charge the guns after loading, and also to de-arm them when they came back from a mission to the dearm area. By the way, Kay still has these solenoids in place. I checked! Also she still has some of the air line connections, but some of the quick connects have been cut off.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Randy, I would just about bet that your "tinned" ammo had 1945 mfg dates or earlier on them! Good info there. We have been looking for the ammo boxes that went in the gun bay. Looks like they may be "unobtainium" since they weren't made out of metal. But then we are still considering some gas powered guns if we can make them work satisfactorily. That would make a lot of racket, huh? It would be fun to buzz some treehuggers and rattle their world, but somebody would complain, ya know. Wonder where Bob D is? He hasn't chimed in yet on the bomb dump location. Maybe Frank remembers?? Stay warm! Going to be hard here in NJ tonight. I am dreading having to get up and see if the car will start in the morning. JR

.......... I would just about bet that your "tinned" ammo had 1945 mfg dates or earlier on them!

The only tinned ammo I saw was at Hurlburt, where we had the linking machine. Inside the tins the rounds were separated by cardboard spacers. We found some where the arsenal workers had written their names and date on the spacers. We even found some that would say something like "This if for Hitler", or stuff like that. Of course, at the time, we had a good laugh about it and threw it away with the rest of the trash. Sure wish I had kept some of them.
I never saw any .50 cal. dated any later than 1944, even at the end of 1966 at NKP.
Surprisingly, a couple rounds (inert, of course)somehow made it home with me. I have 3 linked rounds that were made at Frankford Arsenal in1940, and a couple others made in 44 at "SL", which I assume would stand for either St. Louis or Salt Lake. Most of what I saw had either FA or LC (lake city) designations.
About a month ago I bought a dummy round that had "LC 06" on the bottom. Apparently, LC is still in business.
One thing I didn't mention about the gun picture above, the guns are laid out on the table in groups of 4. The guns had to be configured for either RH or LH operation when they were assembled.
Yea, you picked a bad week to come to NJ. 8 degrees here now at 9pm.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

I'm afraid Frank does not remember where the NKP bomb dump was located but I did come across some information about the delivery of the bombs to NKP. Like Randy mentioned, the munitions were trucked from the Sattahip Naval Base north past Korat Air Base and then on t0 NKP. In November,1967 an 18 truck convoy was put together and Thai drivers were hired. Evidently security was pretty lax and along the way the drivers were pulling off the road to grab a bit of food or drink whenever they felt the need to do so. One truck overturned, near Korat, and personnel from the base managed to right it and get it reloaded. As the convoy proceeded north they started having multiple flat tires. Upon investigation, the road had been seeded with nails inserted through a small section of inner tubing. These had been covered with dirt. By the time the convoy reached the area of NKP they had incurred 23 flat tires.
Frank Nelson
Nimrod Oct 67/68